My last couple of articles have talked about crazy combo decks that can do some incredible things under the right conditions. However, how do you know which of these decks to take to the next ARG and which to leave at home? For decks that are commonly played in tournaments, it is easy to see how that deck performed in the last big event. However, for newer decks, there are a few easy questions we can think about to determine if a deck is good or not. Today I’m going to talk about what makes a deck viable, and how to decide if your deck fits the bill.​The first thing we want to ask ourselves with any new deck is “What are we trying to beat?” - ideally the answer is “everything”, but with real decks we have to pick our battles. For example, if we have a deck that summons a lot of untargettable monsters, we’re going to have a great Sky Striker matchup but probably a below average Thunder Dragon matchup. On the flip side, indestructible monsters are good against Thunder Dragons but weak to Sky Striker Widow Anchor. This means different decks will be good for different tournaments, which we will talk about later. Most sleeper decks succeed because of a niche that they leverage to get ahead, so the first step in determining a decks strength is deciding what makes that niche valuable.

First, we want to decide if our niche is actually good. This is best done with respect to three different variables: power, consistency, and flexibility. When we ask ourselves if a strategy is powerful, we want to know how close we get to winning the game when we do it. Drawing the five pieces of Exodia, resolving a Cannon Soldier + Firewall loop, and using Gumblar + Extra Link on the first turn are all examples of extremely powerful plays. If our deck aims to gain an advantage with one of these, we will usually focus on maximizing the frequency we can do this combo. This is where consistency, or how often our deck can do something, comes into play. Consistent strategies are ones that happen almost every game, like Sky Striker setting Widow Anchor, Burning Abyss summoning Dante, or Monarchs doing absolutely nothing. Power and consistency let us look at how strong an individual play is - no strategy is perfect, so every deck will have some balance of power and consistency for each of its plays. However, the power and consistency of each individual play might depend on how a particular game is going. This is where the last variable comes in - flexibility. In this case, a “flexible” deck is one that has a lot of options available to it with a given hand. Decks like Sky Striker are flexible because they have searcher cards (Engage and Shizuku) that fetch a whole host of different cards. Where power and consistency let us look at one particular play, flexibility compares how valuable each of those plays are worth over our whole deck. In general, strong decks excel in at least two of these variables: Sky Strikers are flexible and consistent, but none of their plays are particularly strong on their own. Gouki is powerful and consistent, but the strongest builds focus only on a single combo. A deck like Monarchs is powerful and has lots of different options, but won’t consistently get off the ground. As we are building our deck, we want to consider which of these qualities it will have.

The next thing to think about is what tournament we are preparing for. Let’s say we have a deck that we know is very good against Sky Strikers. If you are preparing for a locals, there is a good chance we know exactly how many Sky Striker players to expect. If there are a lot, then great! Our deck is going to do very well. If there aren’t many, maybe we should consider something else. At a larger event, we might not know exactly how many Sky Striker players there will be. If Sky Striker has done well recently, we can expect at least a few people to play it - but some of the people that played it at the last event might switch to their own Sky Striker counter. This is when we have to consider how polarized our deck is. If our deck beats Sky Striker 100% of the time but beats everything else 0% of the time, it’s probably not a great choice for a big event. It’s a lot better if our deck wins 70% of the time against Sky Striker and 50% of the time against everything else. In general decks with polarized matchups are good for small tournaments, while we need decks with a good matchup against the field for larger ones

These first two points are largely theory-based; even a deck that sounds good on paper must be tested to see if it’s actually good. Before a big event, one of the best ways to prepare is build a “gauntlet” of all the decks we expect to play against. From there, we can have one person play the deck we intend to test and another person play one of the “meta” decks in the field, and then repeat for all the other decks. This will give us a real sense of how our deck will perform in a tournament setting, and covers some of the blind sports our theory may have. However, beware! It is very easy to be deceived by results, and just because we lose the first 10 games with a deck doesn’t mean we won’t win the next 50. It’s important not only to play lots of games of each matchup, but to practice smart playtesting strategies (which will be another article soon!) to get the best results.

Deciding whether a deck is viable can be hard, but these are just some of the questions we should ask ourselves to make the decision easier. These tips certainly do not give all the answers, but Identifying our decks strengths with strong theory makes it a lot easier to decide which decks are even worth testing. The more we practice these techniques, the better we will become at deciding which of our ideas are worth building into real decks.​How do you guys decide what decks are good? Let us know and make sure to follow the ARG PRO Yugioh! Facebook page for all of our team’s updates. As always, Play Hard or Go Home!

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By VINNIE SILVERMAN​

Vinnie Silverman has been playing Yu-Gi-Oh! at a competitive level for 8 years and is always on the forefront of new deck building strategies. When he's not playing at locals with his latest brew, he studies Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University and learns other TCGs.

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